Summer 1960
by Thefriendlyvandal
Summary: History repeats itself.


In the summer of 1960 Medic told his Scout, sitting on the exam table in front of him, that he had to start wrapping his hands.

"Sorry doc, no can do."

Scout told him there was no way he was going to do that, he had never wrapped his hands in a fight before and had been fine, never wrapped them while pitching and had been fine, went on and on and on about how he didn't get the point, didn't even pause to give him a chance to say why he should.

And that brought them here: post fight, Scout laying pale with pain on his examination table with an otherwise passive expression, clutching onto his broken wrist.

And of course, Medic was furious.

He smiled at him and grabbed up the obviously smashed wrist and hand with a little more force than necessary.

"You know why zis is broken?"

Scout looked at him blankly.

"I dunno. Broke it."

"You didn't wrap it."

The younger rolled his eyes dramatically. "I told you, there's no point to it. It doesn't even do anything."

"Oh, you don't know what zit does? You will not do zit unless I tell you what it does? Is this the point? Because no baseball coach has ever told you how to wrap your hands?"

He yanked Scout's hand in front of his face.

"Let me give you short lesson on anatomy, hm?"

"Doc- shit, ow, let go!"

Medic grabbed one side of his broken arm as roughly as he could, making Scout sputter in pain, then leaned in close.

"Zhis is your ulna. And this-"

He twisted the arm partially around fast and sharp with a crack. Probably wasn't making the injury any better, but it would be worth it if it wouldn't happen again. Scout continued to swear in pain.

"-Is your radius. Your radius and your ulna are the bones in your lower arm. Connecting them together is tendons and muscles, and directly underneath them are the bones in your palm, your Lunate, your Pisiform, your Triqueral, your Scaphold…" He read off each of them, making his point with a harsh pinch to the hand over each in turn. "When you swing your bat, which you do about one hundred, two hundred times a day, sometimes an hour, it not only destroys your UCL ligament, but zit damages this-"

Medic flipped his hand so he could see the palm, and slammed down under his pinkie on the damaged side.

"SHIT!"

"-Which is something called the hook of your hamate bone. Oh I'm sorry, does zhat hurt? Because when athletes don't wrap their hands, there's nothing between zhese bones and ligaments and your bat, and then you fall on them wrong to add to it-"

"SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! LETGO!"

Medic let go, and Scout pulled back, reeling in pain.

"Wrap your hands. And your wrists. You fight recklessly enough without permanently disabling yourself, do you understand?"

* * *

 _Medic denied it as long as he could, did as much as he could, blatantly refused the idea for an amount of time, and two days later, was still coughing._

 _He tapped his foot impatiently, paced across the cool white linoleum of the empty med bay, thermometer in mouth, waiting for the mercury to finish rising. When his timer went off he ripped it out of his mouth and read it._

 _102.3._

 _Medic huffed in disapproval, frantically shook out the thermometer, reset the timer, and tried again, badly trying to suppress another coughing fit._

 ** _If you have a fever your team will die._**

 ** _If you are sick your team will die._**

 ** _You cannot be sick._**

 ** _You cannot be sick._**

 ** _You cannot be sick._**

 ** _You are the one person on this team that cannot be sick._**

 _When the timer went off, he did the same as before, anxiety rising rapidly in his chest._

 _102.3._

 _No._

 _No, no no no no, that can't be right, it can't be right, you need to be healthy, **you so, so desperately need to be healthy.**_

 _Medic shook out the thermometer, reset the timer, and tried once more, breaking out in a cold sweat for more reasons than the fever._

* * *

Scout was screaming.

No. Not screaming. _Screeching. Wailing in pain. Doing something that Medic had only heard in people burning to death._ He whipped around, raindrops slapping onto his face among the undying din of explosions and gunshots and currently _rain, thunder even, when did it ever rain this hard in the desert?_

But tonight it was dark and pouring. His hair stuck to his face and his clothes to his body, he shivered like it was snow, his head pounded with exhaustion. They had been at this for hours.

Scout continued to scream.

He started to turn in circles on the rooftop, his team's other cries for him ignored. _Where was he?_

"Scout?"

It now sounded like he was spitting something out. The voice came back, hoarse, panicked-

 **I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.**

The desert dirt had dissolved from dust into mud as the night had worn on; he was now covered in it. Streaked across his face, packed onto the soles of his shoes. The stink saturated the air.

 **I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.**

Medic began processing as soon as he saw Scout, laying on the ground in the dirt, sides heaving. He recognized the smell almost immediately; it brought back a memory of medical school, of a sorority prank gone wrong, of watching from the sidelines as a young medical student buckled his legs and fell to the ground in pain.

Acid.

Medic grabbed his shoulders and shoved him roughly into the ground, immediately finding the holes burned in his muddy shirt and ripping them open to see better, frantically trying to wash off the mud to see, god, he could feel the heat of the blisters under his gloved fingertips, could see scout nearly pass out in pain at the touch of it, but he _couldn't fucking see, fucking shit, there was too much rain, it was too damn dark-_

 **I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.**

 _You are a child, you are a child, he wanted to scream and take him by the shoulders and shake him, you are 27 years old and a high school drop out and you are a child, you are here fighting and you are a child, you are running around on a desert face like an idiot every day getting burnt by the sun and hit by bullets and you are a child, you are laying in front of me wailing in pain and you are a child, you are a child scout, why, why, why, why, **you are a child.** _

Medic slapped Scout's hands away from his burns, then yelped in pain himself as his fingertips brushed acid.

 _If you try to heal him now with the gun, the acid will keep burning him. It will heal the affected portions, but not rid the skin of the chemicals._

If he was going to do this, he would have to do it the old fashioned way, and the continuing cries from behind him meant that he would have to do it fast. _Make a decision on how to treat it, do it now._

"Medic!"

"Medic!"

"Medic!"

 _Why, Scout, why weren't you careful, Scout,_ he was passed out now, ugly blisters forming on his neck where he had been splattered. Try as he must, Medic couldn't identify the source, but had his assumptions-

"Medic!"

That last call for him didn't sound like a cry for help.

"Medic! Medic! Medic!" No, Sniper wasn't yelling _for_ him; Sniper was yelling _at_ him, and Medic looked up from the younger's limp body just in time to be hit, point-blank, by the headlights of a blue 4-wheeler, and the vehicle that followed.

 **May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.**

* * *

 _Medic had peptic ulcers, and the reason for those ulcers was his (commonplace marriage) husband._

 _"Look, I'll be fine!" –Quote Sniper, before falling from a building._

 _"You don't have to hover around me, ya' know." –Quote Sniper, before being shot right in front of him._

 _"Me? I'm just bored, hun." –Quote Sniper, before a sticky bomb explosion no more than five feet away._

 _"I'm fine, babe." –Quote Sniper, directly after coughing up blood from internal bleeding._

 _"See? I told you ya' don' haveta worry." –Quote Sniper, each and every time, laying on one of his beds, looking up at him with a busted leg or a broken rib, a concussion, burns, gashes, you name it, whether it was on his virtual deathbed or just a few cuts and bruises._

 _"I love ya'." –Quote Sniper, each and every time, before closing his eyes to rest._

 _Needless to say, Medic could never stay mad at him for long._

* * *

Medic was, in fact, an avid Lutheran. He had been raised in a Lutheran family, with Lutheran parents, Lived in an extremely Lutheran city in the literal birth country of Lutheranism in an extremely Lutheran portion of Europe, gone to a Lutheran church every Sunday, been confirmed at that same church and god damn, was he a Lutheran at heart, no matter how much he told himself otherwise.

But that being said, Medic lived in an Atheist household, on an Atheist team, surrounded by people who did not believe in god and were not raised in religious upbringings, and he now, contrary to his own childhood rearing, found himself largely enjoying the same ideals.

But there were still moments where it slammed into him full force.

And it was moments like this, scalpel cutting into a young man's burned flesh while he wailed in pain, trying desperately to rid his gloves of mud and dirt and blood and vomit, when he repeated it in his head, the prayer that had been pounded into him as a child to repeat in a church pew every Sunday for most of his life, **_Vater unser im Himmel geheiligt werde dein Name_** Scout screamed in pain again, kicking one of the metal lights with a heavy clang, he called for Sniper to help hold him down and **_Dein Reich komme dein wille geschehewie im Himmel so aur Erden Unser tagliches Brot gib uns heute Und vergib uns unsere Schuld_** "Dammit! Shit!" Sniper struggled to pin him onto the metal table, Medic's hair stuck to his forehead with sweat and he roughly maneuvered the scaple onto the next fizzling chemical burn, **_wie auch wir vergeben unsern Schuldigern und fuhre uns nicht in Versuchung—_**

 ** _You are a child, you are a child, god help him, he's a child_**

 ** _-sondern erlose uns von dem bosen_** Scout was running out of energy. Heavy bumped the table, and Medic shot him a glare that burned like the chemicals on his patient's skin. _Touch me right now and god help you, touch him right now and god help you, block my light and god help you, bring me the wrong medications and god help you, refuse to follow my instructions and god help you, if we miss a moment this will burn into his bloodstream and there will be no way for me to revive him, god help you, god help you, god help him and god help you, **Denn dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit, Amen.**_

* * *

To whom it may concern, he thought, pessimistically writing the note to Scout's wife in his head, over and over again, trying to figure out the exact words to that final nail in a 27 year old father's coffin, _To whom it may concern:_

I could not save your husband.

To whom it may concern,

Your husband fell into the mud like you saw him do a hundred thousand times since you first met him and saw him play and this time he did not get up.

To whom it may concern,

We are going to take your husband's dead body in a truck into the middle of the badlands, where we are going to chop him up with a bone saw and throw him into a shallow grave where no one will ever find him and you'll never see him again.

To whom it may concern,

Your husband was a fucking child that was shot with bullets and burned with acid in a muddy back alley and left to die and I could not save that boy.

Archimedes stood on his arm and cooed softly as he watched Scout's struggling heartbeat flicker across the screen. Scout was pale and cold and very, very still, to the point where Medic could sense the death clinging to his skin and feel the younger's breath begin to shutter with uncertainty. The medigun glowed softly beside him, working, yes, but not fast enough, not well enough, _not good enough for this kind of thing_ -

 _Make him comfortable, let nature take it's course._

He had chills up his spine.

That was option one.

Option two was kill to him now so he doesn't have to suffer. Euthanasia.

Option three involved sucking up his pride, breaking their contract, and loading Scout up in a car to drive him to the university hospital two hours away.

And Option four was to wait.

 _Vater unser in Himmel, geheiligt werde dein Name, dein Reich komme, dein wille geschehe…_

He swallowed.

* * *

 _Medic rarely slept in his own bed anymore._

 _Most of the time now, he just found it easier to sleep in the clinic, on the bed in the corner he had claimed as his own. Close to his guns, close to his supplies, close to anything if someone needed help in the night, and, most important of all, close to his birds._

 _"….Coo… Coo…"_

 _They patted around on his sheets as he dosed, settling down, fluffing their feathers, pruning, fluffing again._

 _"…Cooo…"_

 _He yawned and rearranged himself on the bed, causing a flutter of wings as his companions repositioned themselves as well. They usually spent the day outside, perching around the clinic window or the surrounding buildings; then all came back to spend the night with him, perching in the rafters, on his guns, on the lights, on himself._

 _"…Coo….Coo…"_

 _"…Coo…"_

 _He opened his eyes to be met with nine snow-white doves, fluffed up and cooing softly, sitting on his bed. Not all of them always came back for the night, but he had learned to trust his lovely birds with their freedom; the rest of the twelve would come back in the morning for seed, or sometime in the next few days._

 _But there was one dove that came back, night after night after night, who perched with him almost constantly, and that was Archimedes, the bird perched on his lampshade and kept him company when the other factor wasn't in._

 _And that other factor was Sniper._

 _Like his birds, Sniper didn't always come back for the night. He no doubt had just fallen asleep in one of his odd 'nests' and had neglected to come home for dinner; but also like his birds, Sniper had two driving forces to come back from the outdoors and the bush and the sand where he felt at home, and that was food and himself._

 _Medic was awoken by the fluttering of wings and the squeak of the bed, then felt warmth wrap around him. Ach, there he was. He had come back tonight._

 _"A little late, ja?" Medic didn't bother to open his eyes._

 _"Ah came home, didn't ah?"_

 _"And you did so in one piece. I am impressed, Herr Sniper."_

 _"Oh, stop it. I'll leave ya, I'm warning you." He felt Sniper nuzzle him affectionately, to the slowly swinging lights above, to the soft flutter of dove wings, to the smell of rock and dust clinging to his partner's skin._

 _"….cooo…."_

 _Danke sch_ ö _n._

The heat of the night weighed on the desert so heavily that it was hard to breathe.

Sniper kicked open the door, florescent light meeting dark orange sand and broken pavement.

"Are you sure you wanna do this?"

Medic looked at the father of eight on the stretcher between them, then looked back up at his companion.

"Ja. I'm sure."

* * *

 _Of all the people on his team, Pyro was the one that concerned him the most, medically._

 _He and Pyro had an arrangement that they developed over the years. If something was wrong, Pyro would come to him at night, and he would lock the door, and she could have a bit more privacy that way, because Pyro was covered, head to toe, in what he would call about 90% of her body, with third degree burns._

 _Completely, utterly, mutilated by fire._

 _It had surprised him when he had first seen her without her gear on, many, many years ago; but it no longer surprised him now. Pyro had never disclosed what had happened, and he had never asked and never told. She was private in that sense. Medic couldn't blame her; should the others find out that 1. She was a woman in her thirties and 2. She was disfigured beyond belief, she would never get any sort of privacy._

 _There were several other things that were interesting about Pyro, as well; for example, she was infertile, in the sense that her fallopian tubes were tied surgically. This was something that she had disclosed to him, but not elaborated on, and Medic hadn't probed any further. She did not menstruate, and could not become pregnant. It was as simple as that._

 _But she was wonderful at her job, she was elegant and careful but reckless at the same time, she worked with fire because she knew it too well, because she and fire had an intimate relationship, because she was not as stupid as they thought she was and was perfectly aware of every single thing she was doing because she was insane, off the charts insane, but they all were here, and thus he dismissed it._

 _"Let me zee."_

 _Pyro's face was scarred beyond any possible previous recognition, both eyes permanently winced in odd directions, bald due to death of hair follicles. Brown ran with pale streaks of scars and blotches of mangled red skin, burns old and permanent, both breasts removed for what he assumed to be the same reasons._

 _But she smiled at him as she showed him her newly broken wrist, and that was all Medic needed to know._

 ** _I will protect you, Bonita._**

 ** _I'll protect all of you, as much as I can._**

* * *

They burst onto the highway going ten miles over the speed limit and got the call not five minutes later, because the Administrator never slept and neither did Miss Pauling.

 _"You need to turn around."_

Sniper had the cell phone pinched between his shoulder and this ear while Medic shocked the half-dead body in the back to some semblance of life for the fourth time that evening, headlights blaring down the desert highway, cutting through the silence, kicking up dust and dirt.

"Can't do that."

 _"You don't understand, you need to turn around."_ He barley heard the voice from the cell phone, but heard the panic. _"They are going to cut your contract if you don't go ba-"_

Sniper hung up the phone, and Medic did chest compressions for the hundredth time.

 _Solider was colorblind._

 _It was one of those odd little things you learned about people when you were a doctor._

 _So when this Solider exploded mid combat in 1967, Medic looked right, looked left, and took his eyes from the dust._

Twenty minutes later, they got another call.

 _"Your team's up."_

"You woke them up?"

 _"Nah, they did that on their own."_

Scout's pulse faded out again, and Medic went straight to shocking him this time, giving up on CPR altogether.

 _Please him live._

 ** _I'll take care of you._**

 ** _I'll protect you._**

 ** _I'll do my job as long as you are alive._**

 _"Please turn around."_

 _you need to wrap your hands, coo, gott in himmel, please turn around, he'll come back, ill be fine, ill protect you, to whom it may concern, ill do my best, mission over in 30 seconds, the Hippocratic oath, summer of 1960_

 _at 4:07 a father of 8 stopped breathing and never breathed again_

 _at 4:07 lars stopped caring and never cared again_

* * *

Team: RED

Name: DAVID ABBADELLI

Position (Class): SCOUT

Age: 27

Time of death: 4:08 AM

Revival Attempted: Y/ **N**

Cause of death: SEVERE BLOOD LOSS, SEVERE CHEMICAL POISIONING

Medic in Attendance: DR LARS VOGT

 _TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,_

 _IT IS OUR GREAT REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT_

* * *

They went through Scouts after David at the rate of about one a year. To acid, to poison, to bombs, to flame, to bullets- you name it, and Medic had seen a Scout die from it.

But the boy who stepped off the plane in the summer heat that day was born for this job.

Literally.

"Alright! Well, here you guys go. This is your new Scout." Miss Pauling pushed him forward gently, urging him into the fray. The boy stumbled forward awkwardly, dented bat dragging in the dust and dirt, adjusting his baseball hat to the late morning heat-

"Lars."

Sniper's cigarette fell out of his mouth as he said it, eyes locked over his shoulder, completely rigid, sniper rifle he was cleaning still locked in his fingers, color drained from his face; then latched onto his arm.

"Lars, look."

Medic whipped around, and immediately understood, because he took one look at this new Scout and knew immediately that this was one of the Abbadelli boys, that he was from Boston, that he could swing a bat like no other and that he died in the back of an aging van on State Road 4 in the summer of 1960.

 _Vater unser in Himmel._

In the summer of 1971, Medic squints at the young pitcher of 19 sitting on the exam table in front of him, and tries to ignore the irony when he tells him he needs to start wrapping his hands.


End file.
